After deliberating a convicted killer's fate for six hours, a jury recommended Tuesday that he be sentenced to death. The San Diego Superior Court jury rejected a punishment of life in prison without parole, the only other possible sentence for Dean Carter, during the penalty phase of his murder trial. The same jury last month convicted Carter, 36, a former TV news cameraman in Alaska, of first-degree murder in the April 14, 1984, strangulation of Janette Cullins, 24, of Pacific Beach.

A Pacific Beach man found bludgeoned to death in his home had shot and wounded an intruder last year at a previous residence, and had testified two months ago in connection with that burglary, court records show. San Diego police said Thursday that they are investigating--but downplaying--the possibility that the earlier shooting might be related to the death of Kelly Gene Shaw, 55. His body, and that of Georgia Anne Gregg, 56, were found Wednesday.

Police were investigating Wednesday the killings of a man and woman in a quiet Pacific Beach neighborhood during an apparent robbery or burglary. In a single-family home in the 700 block of Agate Street, police found both bodies--that of a 52-year-old man who rented the house and of a 56-year-old woman described as a good friend of the man, San Diego homicide police Lt. Dan Berglund said.

Roger Sing Ip was sentenced Wednesday to four years in state prison for killing a 15-year-old boy in 1989 after a traffic dispute in Pacific Beach. Ip, 35, of Spring Valley, received the maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter. A jury convicted him on that charge Feb. 20. Ip was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder in two trials stemming from the July 10, 1989, shooting death of Kurt Von Yokes, a Mission Bay High School student.